Lucy McLaughlan is a favorite artist of mine and has an exhibition on at the moment at Lazarides in London – wish I could make it.

She has great fluid lines that seem like they could go on forever. The style of her work is so distingtive, her earlier stuff was suggestive of the 70’s Op art scene but most of this new stuff seems to go well and beyond that into something new. For one, she has moved on from the monchromatic into warmer, earthier browns. But really the big leaps are in how she moves beyond the confines of a 4 borders s you can see from this awesome TACIT video below:

These photo’s are so fresh. The colours are extraordinary – i guess it must be with some industrial sized sparkler. It looks a better version of the opening scene from Terminator 2. She calls it light painting and she reckons the prints are for sale.

When is graffiti no graffiti. When its authorised and done by the council. Japan has this respect for superheros you just dont get anywhere else. Can you imagine London councils painting Fat Slags over public toilets or the US spray painting XKCD sencils onto New York subway walls. Not likely.

The final touches to my Sydney, Newtown graffiti book have finally been completed. Check it out at Blurb.com (link is inlcuded below).

It’s so cool to have it finally completed. It catalogues about 4 years worth of photos I’ve taken of Sydney’s graffiti neighborhoods of Newtown, Erskineville, Enmore, Camperdown.

There approxamately 120 photos in all including the original Banksy in Enmore’s Phillip st which has now faded away; the Idiot Box by Andrew Aitken opposite the Imperial Hotel (which has now been scrubbed). There are a bunch of early Kill Pixie pieces that I love including the first one I ever came across in Camperdown park which said “They sneak, they hide, they kill for cardigans”. Plus the prolific pasteups and stencils of Stryder X and Glitagrrl.

Check it out and pass on the link to others you think might be interested.

For those of you keen to check out some more of the photos inside, go to:

I love this. Reverse Graffiti takes the elements of graffiti that highlight the hypocrisy of council policies, public property laws and definitions of vandalism and ratchets them all up a notch.

It’s so clean in its pure expression of the clumsiness of policy to deal with public art. Reverse Graffiti is the removal of dirt or cleaning away sections to “paint” a picture:

“Instead of applying an image, it is taken away, carved, wiped or power washed out of the omnipotent dirt. The viewer is greeted by a quality piece of street art while simultaneously realising just how filthy the area actually is.”

Miranda Marcus from her article in Sevenglobal makes the point in the article that it’s basically a community service – cleaning walls to reveal something beautiful.

There’s no way you can consider it a crime. And the only way to get rid of it is to clean the walls thereby further improving the infrastructure of our neighbourhoods.

Seems like the art-graffiti showdown is upon us as Pest Control, the Banksy-backed authentication body set up by Steve Lazarides of Lazarides gallery is attempting to get Vermin’s street art Banksy’s removed from the Lyon & Turnbull Contemporary artauction, set to start viewings on Thursday this week in Marlebone.

“The sale will clearly be a test case but only, of course, if it actually takes place. As the Daily Telegraph went to press, news was filtering through that Pest Control was seeking to have all the works withdrawn from the sale.”

I’m not surprised they’re trying to get Vermin thrown out. Iif they go ahead it will signify tacit approval that the 2 authentication organisations should generally accepted as 2 sides of the same coin. I believe a body should exist to authenticate Banksy street art but it should at least be condoned by the artist himself, which it clearly isnt in this case.

As if the Banksy issue wasnt enough, there is a debate going on as to whether Michael Wojas should be in any position to sell the works of the famous artists from the Colony Room Club in Soho since the artists gave the work to the club and not him:

“It is turning very nasty indeed. The members are now demanding that either Wojas proves his title to the works on sale, which is to take place this Saturday and all of which are featured in a lavish catalogue prepared by Lyon and Turnbull, or withdraw them immediately. If he fails to do this, they say, legal action will be taken to have the disputed works removed from the sale.”